Translanguaging practices in the EFL classroom - the Polish context

Abstract

This paper reflects on classroom observations and focus group interviews with teachers to explore translanguaging by teachers and students in the Polish educational context. This qualitative research aimed at investigating teachers’ attitudes toward intertwining the L1 and L2 and other semiotic resources in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom and attempted to determine to what extent translanguaging practices are implemented. To this end, the question was addressed whether teachers encouraged students to leverage their fluid, entire linguistic resources and other modalities to convey more information and get engaged in a range of tasks and activities. The collected data revealed that the teachers declared giving priority to the exclusive use of English in the classroom, but, in practice, expressed a pragmatic orientation toward the L1 deployment. Albeit the teachers reported to accept students’ recourse to students’ mother tongue, considering it a support and scaffold for more effective learning, shuttling between languages, in their own view, was not a daily classroom routine. In the same vein, the study participants did not position their students as emergent bilinguals, nor did they intentionally hardwire flexible bilingual pedagogy into their teaching. Both the L1 and L2, employed to a various extent depending on students’ proficiency of English, were regarded as separate entities. The very few examples of translanguaging discussed in the paper were unmarked and produced mostly by students spontaneously.